ALARM, ALARM, THE ENDMEME THREATENS ALL LIFE

This is the sequel to “Why I Became a Militant Non-Believer” on this blog.

Humanity is in a race with itself and we're running out of time. The planet is in dire straights. Nature has given mankind the power of reason, and in return, like Frankenstein’s monster, humans destroy her with the power of science. The waste of billions of years of evolution is unbearable to contemplate.

It’s the arrogance and stupidity that’s so hard to take. Instead of blessing nature with joy and appreciation, humanity abuses her rivers, forests, great oceans; there's even tons of space junk floating over our heads. There’s barely a spot on the planet that humanity hasn’t befouled. It wouldn’t be this way if people realized that we grew out of the planet and we are made of the very stuff of the earth. We even need iron in our blood.

The endmeme is the belief that God is coming to destroy the world because we’re all miserable sinners. Many powerful politicians and world leaders, like Sarah Palin, believe Christ and his hordes of pissed-off angels will come in our lifetime. Christians believe the Four Horsemen will let slip not only the dogs of war, but plague, famine, and death as sidekicks. Those who do not accept the word of God will be in for a hard time, to use a little Brooklynese understatement.

Muslims believe we all face the Day of Judgment and so do Jews. Excluding Buddhists, five billion people out of 6.8 billion carry this ominous, scripture-based belief. This is and always has been unhealthy for mankind. Beliefs are important because they determine behavior: when you believe it’s going to rain, you carry an umbrella.

History is rampant with self-fulfilling prophecies. The Wehrmacht’s marching into Russia during Operation Barbarossa was a fulfillment of a prophecy in Mein Kampf. Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem on an ass was a fulfillment of a prophecy in Isaiah. The Bible alone contains hundreds of self-fulfilled prophecies (and by writing about it after it happened.) The Bible predicts natural disasters at the end of days, and humans continue widespread deforestation, pollution and reckless spewing of fossil fuel emissions to make it happen. The PBS show "Extreme Ice" is painful to watch.

Pope Benedict certainly believes in the Book of Revelation. A co-meme of the endmeme is belief in the Four Horsemen, and famine is one of this ghastly quartet. With this horrible idea firmly embedded in his brain since seminary days, the pope recently went to Africa with the misguided tragic command for his followers not to use birth control. With 200,000 to 400,000 dying of starvation yearly and wonderful animals like gorillas and rhinos on the brink of extinction due to human aggression into their habitat, the Holy Father ordered Africans to continue adding powder to the population bomb gone berserk. Clearly, the man in under the control of a pernicious and selfish brain virus that manipulates him to predestine hundreds of thousands to ignominious death.

It is disheartening that carriers of the endmeme have the governments of many countries locked in a self-preservating system. In this country a candidate who refuted the Bible and the Book of Revelation wouldn’t have a chance. The endmeme is embedded in the minds of the vast majority of lawmakers. These people have to be deprogrammed soon, or surely the endmeme will lead humanity to a nuclear holocaust.

To be continued,

More on the endmeme at mirrorreversal.com or my video on Youtube. Mirror Reversal contains a glossary of memetic terms.

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“The meme complex only cares about its own replication and not a bit about the welfare of its host or the real world.”

Compare the Christian memeplex to the rabies virus. The initial particles attack the limbic brain (where emotions and rage are derived) and drive the host to madness. Remarkably, it then attacks the salivary glands to create its own vector, the bite with saliva to another animal. It then, enters the blood system of the prey to repeat its live cycle. Doesn’t care much about the host nor the environment. A memeplex is much like a virus.

Religions and other memeplexes are in fierce competition. Thousands of religions are extinct with only a few left. For a religion to last a thousand years there has to be a strong horizontal transmission of information, father to son.

I how ever do believe in culling’s in certain circumstances e.g N.Z has huge pest problem ”opossum.

Of course, that’s a much different issue. Many countries suffer from opportunistic invasions of predatory animals and plants. Nothing wrong with trying to keep the natural order. I live by the Everglades and they’re very careful to watch invading species.

The fact is religion has corrupted and deranged Palin’s worldview, religion does that to a person and has done in the past (george bush)\
There are hundreds of examples of people being taken over by a ruthless memeplex. Hitler devoted his life to Aryan Supremacy. That memeplex was his first concern with everything he did. Finally he invaded Poland to make room for the next Nazi generation to carry the memeplex. You could argue that this memeplex was the cause of death of 60 million people.

There are many other examples. Darwin was obsessed with the evolution meme. It was the meme that got him on the Beagle in his 20’s because he was toying with the idea.

You’re getting the idea. There’s still much to talk about. Fun stuff and it answers a lot of questions.

It's 7:13, Saturday morning as I write this. I keep forgetting you're in New Zealand.

Here’s an excerpt from Mirror Reversal that touches on the question at hand. I wrote this five years ago and it’s coming true now. My heroine is talking to Sweapussy Lix, a well known East Village prostitute.

“The country is stultified in Calvinist roots,” answered Cynthia. “Not only that. All religions encourage their membots to have large families in an overpopulated world. That’s how they maintain political hegemony, through numbers. Notice how religions persecute homosexuals: they don’t reproduce, that’s why. The meme complex only cares about its own replication and not a bit about the welfare of its host or the real world. How many animals are going extinct due to ‘fragmentation of habitat,’ meaning loss of living space due to human encroachment? Memeplex propagation is insatiable and would kill off every polar bear in the North Pole if it needed to. With total indifference. Just to increase the number of hosts it infects. It’ll take a long time before the powerful wise up.”

The fact is religion has corrupted and deranged Palin’s worldview. She thinks she has the right to kill wolves and bears. They might as well be made of plastic. The humans were in Alaska about 20,000 years when Asian aborigines crosses the island bridge; but the grey wolf (the parent of all dogdom) was there since the Miocene Epoch—30,000,000 years ago.

One would think the wolves has some basic rights, but religion says that mankind has“dominion” over the rest of the planet’s life forms and can do whatever it likes with them.

Another way Christianity has screwed up her thinking is Palin believes God created our beautiful planet and Nature had nothing to do with it. All the love and respect that humans should have for the forests, seas, and animals is diverted to an imaginary figurine that doesn’t do a damn thing. Instead of loving the wolves and polar bears, she loves her Assembly of God.

Dreamcatcher, thanks for the comment. How about Sarah Palin's backing of helicopter hunting of wolves and bears. It shows how the Christian memeplex can motivate a membot to do anything. This video shows a cruel, wanton, insane crime against life itself. Over 6.7 billions humans have exploited almost all the land and seas, and now this deranged woman wants to kill the wildlife on the tiny bit of land left to them.

The Christian memeplex doesn’t care about the environment. Their environment is the human brain and its replication is its only concern. Sarah wants to cut down trees to build churches and the wildlife is in the way.

Mirror Reversal is the only novel in quite a while to include a glossary of terms—a memetic lexicon. Along with Steve, I’d be glad to discuss any questions as I feel memetics is very important and throws a lot of light on what’s going on.

Thanks for this. Incidentally, I reason that the lottery and it's larger interstate mega game also attempt to undercut the purpose of an individual's control of a finite unit of time comprising their lives and their productivity. Trading away the milk cow for some magic beans once again is all idol wagerers are being asked to do.

Steve, to continue our study of memes. On one of his video Dan Dennett describes a lancet fluke which infects an ant and drives the insect to climb up a blade of grass and patiently wait. This is not good for the ant. It abandons all its instincts and does the beckoning of the parasite. The ant is consumed by some bovine and the fluke goes on to complete its life cycle. There are no memes at this level, but the story shows how a parasite can over the neurologic apparatus of its host.

Some monks choose to live in a hut on a mountain top with nothing but a Bible and a prayer stool. Just like the ant, something has taken control of the monk’s reasoning.

We see membots all around us. Priests and rabbis, salesmen and soldiers, anybody whose life is dedicated to the replication of the memeplex.

Here’s a favorite of mine. Ever see kids wearing their baseball caps backwards? This completely defeats the function of the visor, to protect the eyes and forehead from too much sun. But there’s a memetic hook here: Cool. Now you’re one of the boys.

I'm retired so I have a lot of time. Teaching is in my blood, 'cause I always liked to explain things.

As far as bio goes, the big picture is fun.

The initial replicators were chemosynthesizers, i.e. they produced their own energy from natural material at hand. This was probably sulfur dioxide from vents in the ocean floor; energy from sunlight came much later.

Here's the mindblower: these early bacteria were called protokaryotes (early kernels) and it told over a Billion (with a B) years to form eukaryotes (true nucleus). That was the great evolutionary jump: the genetic material was protected in its own membrane.

That being so, Carl Sagan says that there are likely to be millions of planets that contain life. But they are probably microorganisms. Just forming a multicellular organism took billions of years, so what is the likelihood of consciousness forming.

We’ll go slow with our study, and get to memes after a little background. One thing is for sure, the accepted scientific explanation is a hellava lot more convincing than God waved his hand to create Adam and then took a rib to make Eve. That’s sexist right there, to make man first—and that's just for openers.

How the heck can fundamentalists be so gullible and credulous with respect to the far-out stuff in the Bible, but be so incredulous and disbelieving with respect to science.

I heard a good one today: He spent his whole life trying to prove that he had nothing to prove.

As always, Richard, it is a pleasure to read your posts. And no, you haven't offended me in any way. I embrace a naturalistic stance and have long abandoned supernaturalism as an explanatory device. I eat, sleep and breath skepticism and doubt. I use a relative, gradient standard in establishing confidence or certainty. Ironically, I am somewhat concerned about offending you, my probing an issue that has value to you. After all, I could just read a book and make my own observations. Honestly, I crave reasonable, mature discourse. It seems in short supply these days.

Abiogenesis is a difficult step for most people. I have no reservations about the science, just my level of understanding. Biological science is a weak area in my knowledge base. Most of my employment revolved around applied engineering. Physics is my second wife. Or maybe my first.

My youth was spent in natures tender embrace. I regret my decision to pursue engineering and the related trades. Biology is far more fascinating. With that in mind I have begun a review of the fundamental science. I am currently reviewing 'Modern Genetic Analysis' and hope to refresh my understanding timely enough to enrich this discussion.

I will spend my spare time contemplating this dynamic of replication. As always, my desire is to understand underlying process. And (of course) to read your next post. Keep it coming!